Brewing Basics Equipment Kit

This is a great starter kit at an excellent price. The closest brew shop to my house was selling a kit with the exact same things in it for 40 dollars more!

I literally paid over twice as much on homebrewers.com for the same product. It is a wonderful starter kit and well worth even what I paid. This is a great deal!

This is a great starter kit. Only thing better is getting it with a groupon. I have looked and looked and this is by far the best deal. Staff is great. Free classes. And the prices on their beer kits are awesome. They have the best selection by far. If you live in the Twin City metro you gotta stop and visit. You can order on line, then pick up..nooo shipping. Their wine making stuff is just as good a deal. Cheap fun. I would suggest having a friend or two to share the cost and to help drink it...5 gallons of beer a batch is a lot. In MN you can make 100 gallons per person per year (over 21) or 200 gallons per household (2 persons). That is like over 3 batches of beer a month if you can manage it.

It is a good kit but i think it would be better to buy the starter kit because your going to have to spend the extra money on the stuff in it anyways and the instructional video uses the starter kit in it not the beginner one.

I ordered this kit with the groupon on a Friday and it was on my porch by Tuesday. The only problem was that the Red Baron capper had a broken magnet, but Midwest sent me a new one with my next order, which arrived just as promptly. Just bottled my first batch today. I can already tell I'll be placing another order soon.

I purchased this kit as part of the Groupon offer and now two batches into my brewing career, I consider this money well spent. I've since bought more items to be able to be more efficient and have more than one batch brewing... But definitely a good kit for the beginner.

This came to me without an air lock so it's hard for me to find much good to say about it. Also the lid feels pretty flimsy and is bent.

Cooked up my first batch last night. I have no complaints about the equipment in the kit - it came as promised - and it was a great price for kit + recipe kit via Groupon.

I do have two concrens though.

First, I agree with Dalton - you're going to want a carboy & wort chiller, and maybe even a kettle, if you're going to keep brewing, so it's probably best to just go all in and get one of the bigger kits. I ended up using my wife's pressure canner as the kettle, and that thing is way too big & heavy & bulky.

Second, and probably most important, I found the documentation to be very lacking. The video lessons used equipment not in the kit and also did not start from square one. People buying this kit are almost all going to be total noobs like I am, and we need to know little stupid things like oh yeah that you have to add water to your air lock, and how EXACTLY to take a hydrometer reading, how to siphon step by step, how to properly sanitize - I mean everything. I had no idea that little black strip with C & F printed on it was a thermometer, nor how to use it - I figured it was just a C to F conversion chart! You guys need to make instructions for this as if you're trying to teach a 10 year old kid - assume absolutely zero knowledge of anything.

Also, when the box came, I didn't open it for a few days - I finally did, and then the recipe box inside says "refrigerate yeast immediately". I was sure I had killed my yeast, but thankfully it was fine. This warning needs to be clearly labeled on the outside box as well. Maybe I didn't see it, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't there.

Anyway, all in all though, I'm glad I made the purchase, and now I'm looking forward to upgrading & getting some of the more advanced equipment. Hope you consider my criticisms above to be constructive.

I got my kit in yesterday, everything looks good. I wish they had thrown in an auto-siphon in there but hey. The best price that I found on the internet) I searched for 8hrs at work, slow day). My only complaint would be is where is the top for my bottling bucket? Does the kit only come with one or is my kit just missing one?

Do yourself a huge favor, and add the 1/2 inch autosiphon and the bottle filler with the spring loaded tip to your order. I have half a dozen batches under my belt, and in my opinion, those are the two things that make this kit do everything you need it to do. The non-spring loaded tip leaks every time it moves, so unless you plan to hold it while you fill 54 bottles, you'll save the less than 3 bucks in wort in the first few kits you brew. You can start a siphon without the autosiphon, but just buy the autosiphon. Starting siphons without it is annoying at best.

Rinse the grain bags and you can use them in your next kit to keep most of the hop debris out of the fermenter. I admit, I was somewhat skeptical that this kit would be good enough. It really is all you need.